My Successor Could Be a Woman, Says Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama in a press conference at Sydney, Australia, has said that his successor could be a woman. The spiritual leader was taking questions regarding the current gender conflict centring Prime Minister Julia Gillard when he made the remark.

Dalai Lama in a press conference at Sydney, Australia, has said that his successor could be a woman. The spiritual leader was taking questions regarding the current gender conflict centring Prime Minister Julia Gillard when he made the remark.

"If the circumstances are such that a female Dalai Lama is more useful, then automatically a female Dalai Lama will come.", Dalai Lama said on Thursday's conference, while on a 10-day tour of Australia.

Gillard had said in the launch of the Labor's Women for Gillard campaign in Sydney that a government led by Tony Abbott would once again banish voices of women from the political sphere. Labor leader Gillard had also said that if the conservatives come back into power in the September elections then they will marginalise women and retard abortion laws.

The 77-year-old exiled spiritual leader said the world is facing a 'moral crisis of inequality' and can do with some compassionate leaders. "In that respect, biologically, females have more potential. Females have more sensitivity about other's well being," he said.

"In my own case, my father, very short temper. On a few occasions I also got some beatings. But my mother was so wonderfully compassionate", the Nobel laureate recalled.

Dalai Lama will speak at Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Darwin in his 10-day-tour throughout the country. The Tibetan leader had sought asylum in India after he fled Chinese rule over Tibet in 1959.